The First 2 weeks

I was just laughing while ready her eviction process, I just told her before I laid her down that "this is what mommy wrote 2 weeks ago tonight!!" I can't believe my baby is already 2 weeks old. So much has happened in 2 weeks that I am in just utter amazement what this little precious girl has been through...I wrote the same thing on my myspace blog, I like to elaborate more, because I feel that people care more on this blog than my myspace blog, people on there are just nosy! Sorry it has taken so long to update but we've been just a little pre-occupied...happy reading

Well, Kara arrived on Monday, January 28th at 1:17p.m. giving her mother a short 12 hour labor and giving me the most wonderful joy in the whole wide world.

My water broke at 12:55a.m. on Monday. I admit it, I gave in and bought castor oil and drank 4 tablespoons of it mixed with orange juice Sunday night about 7p.m. after we got back from dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. I gaged it down only throwing it back up in my mouth 3 times!!!! At 11p.m. after ever so increasing bowel movements, but no contractions, I went to bed, pissed off and telling Tim that this child will NEVER come out of me. Tim shut the TV off about 12:30 and passed right out (so he tells me) and 25 minutes later I was frantically alerting him and telling him that my water was breaking...all over the bed, floor and a path of it to the bathroom! He jumped up to help me but all I did was sit on the toilet and didn't know what to do next! I told Tim I wanted to take a shower and his response was..uh...NO. He got Brandon up and they were running around trying to get stuff ready and I was just calmly getting dressed, I called the hospital, called the doctor, but of course before that, Tim called my mother whom I had warned not to drink too much 4 hours prior when I had talked to her because I WAS going into labor that night! I got dressed, stuffed a towel between my legs, put my hair up and carried my own bags downstairs. I patiently waited for the boys and checked my myspace and diddly screwed around until we walked out the door. Dropped Brandon off at Tim's brothers house and headed to the hospital. We walked through the ER doors and was met by what it seemed like everyone we knew. Tim looked around for a wheelchair and I argued with him, telling him that I wanted to walk and I would be fine. We got upstairs to an empty Labor and Delivery floor and we sat joking with the nurses while I had a couple contractions (those of which I really wasn't timing) weighed myself, signed my papers and the nurse asked "do you have a pad on"...my response was...no mam' I have a towel on! I got hooked up, Tim broke out the video camera against my wishes, and not soon after that my Mom and Dad showed up all excited. We sat and joked and laughed and I was having contractions, laughing through them every 2 minutes. The nurse checked me and I was 3-4 cm dialted and asked if I wanted an epidural...of course I said...why not! Mind you that this is what I was so freaking worried about throughout my whole pregnancy. I almost did a natural birth because I was more scared of an epidural! The lady started my IV which she blew twice and I started to freak out on her, but third time's a charm and she got it in, started me on fluids which I needed before the epidural and went on her merry way! We laughed, joked and laughed at the girl next door who was screaming bloody murder giving birth. The next thing I know here comes the candy man anesthesiologist. I look at Tim with those eyes and all he said was "relax" (that's all he has been telling me for the last 9 months) Mom and Dad leave the room and leave me to get my drugs. No let me just tell you that my fear was reality and it was the most painful thing I have ever had to go through. I know why they drug people up in the OR before they give people those things. Anyway..it was nothing as I expected I thought I would be completely numb but boy I definitely wasn't. I tried to get some sleep as everyone else in my room tried but I just couldn't. I would doze off and the blood pressure machine was going off. They were monitoring my blood pressure every 5 minutes because it was ooh..quite low. All of a sudden out of nowhere I started feeling my contractions one right after the other. I told Tim to get the nurse because I'm sure that this isn't normal. She came in and gave me 2 more shots of happy juice, I still felt them and as my mother was holding my hand and the boys were sleeping, I said "mom, I really wish someone would come check me I feel "funny" " Just then the world's best nurse walks through the door (I know here quite well from working at Guilfoyle) and says "I'm going to check you" Tim piped up and Dad piped up from snoring and when she checked me and said "ARE YOU READY TO PUSH" my answer was "NOPE". Carla said, well hunny, it's time, my mother flew open the bathroom door where her and Dad were hiding and said...holy shit already? They prepped me for pushing and I began. About an hour and a half later out popped a 7lb 2oz baby girl with lots of black hair. When Kara came out she wasn't breathing...of course no one told me that they all just acted like everything was fine. She came out and boom...everyone was gone from my side over to her side. They took her over to the warmer and got her breathing again, but still it wasn't up to par, she was doing a lot of grunting! She went to the nursery accompanied by Daddy and I got all fixed up. I was so happy, I never tore, he didn't have to cut me, and I really felt awesome afterward. I actually looked at my mother and said, it's really not that bad! I won't do it again tomorrow, but it wasn't bad!

Two days in the hospital went quickly and soon we were going home! What an emotional 2 days those were. No sleep, lots of visitors and a new baby I thought I would break. I really wanted to breastfeed which didn't work and made me really emotional, but we got over that. We came home Wednesday with a doctors appt on Thursday and her first blood draw with Mommy and Daddy going with her. She was a little jaundice and they wanted to make sure her levels weren't rising so they drew blood and then we had to go to the doctors. Everything seemed to be fine and they sent us home. Friday was a lazy day with Mommy not getting out of her jammies all day and holding Kara ALL DAY. We got stuff ready and headed up to Grammie and Grampies on Saturday for the night, and to meet the rest of the crazy family! I had a VERY hard time leaving on Sunday and was EXTREMELY emotional. We got home and finished watching the superbowl when all of a sudden....

while feeding Miss Kara and watching the last 35 seconds of the game she started choking and turned blue on me. I quickly handed her to Tim who spend about 35-40 seconds to get her to breathe. I freaked out and was histerical. She began to breathe again but still wasn't acting "right" I begged Tim to go to the ER and after he got me calmed down he called the doctor and had a long conversation with her and pretty much left it up to us what we wanted to do. We got Brandon up and we headed in. Again, greeted by people we know, who rushed us back and looked at her. We weren't there 20 minutes and we were told that we would be spending the night upstairs on the Pediatrics floor. The admitting doctor came in and wanted me to feed her and see if she would do it again, so I did and again she did it and thats when they decided that she probably had acid reflux but she would admit her and they would do testing in the morning. At 4a.m. Kara and I went upstairs to our room and got settled. They poked and prodded her and stuck thermometers up her butt..it was horrible. I of course was a wreck and Tim had gone home to sleep and take Brandon home. I got ZERO hours of sleep because they also hooked her up to a monitor that measured her breathing because in the ER they saw that she would periodically stop breathing. So the monitor let off this ear piercing screech when she wasn't breathing and even though we were right next to the nurses desk no one would come running, so I jump out of bed and tend to her.

Monday morning (Kara is 7 days old) Grammie came down to see us and be with Tim and I because Grammie knew that I was a complete mess and needed some extra moral support. We had a "syntha-scan" done on Kara which was a scan where they had her drink some crap and then her formula and they took a 27 minute constant scan to see if she had refulx. She did wonderful, slept through the whole thing. The technologist said he didn't see anything, but he wasn't a doctor. So we went back upstairs where they continued to poke and prod at her when at about 3p.m. she had another episode of choking and gagging. I marched my butt out to the nurses desk and told them that I wanted my daughter hooked back up to the monitor NOW. The doctor ordered 24/7 monitoring and she hadn't been hooked up since 7:30 when they took her off because I was holding her! Around 6p.m after waiting all day for an EKG of her heart I asked the nurse when they were coming...her response...what EKG. I said...not so calmly...Dr. Victoria ordered an EKG to be done TODAY...she argued with me and then looked in the chart where it said do EKG. Opps the nurse says...it will be done in the morning. OK...another night in the hospital. The next morning Kara had an EKG and then we waited for an Upper GI series to be done. EKG was normal, went for the upper GI...found out that was normal. Dr. Victoria said well, she has a little bit of reflux, but not enough to blame her episodes on reflux, I'm ordering a 12 hour test...a pneumogram. That was 9a.m. Tuesday morning. At 8p.m. Tuesday night we were visiting my cousin who was admitted on that floor as well when Kara decided that she would have another episode...this one...happened in front of people and a nurse. She projectiled across the room and turned blue on me. The nurse quickly grabbed her from me and got her breathing again. I said my goodbyes to my cousin and we headed back to our room, where again I was alone, Tim was at class taking an exam. I said to the nurse who had told me that the pneumogram wouldn't be done until Wednesday night...that I wanted it done TONIGHT! She called the on-call doctor and within an hour they were hooking my baby up to all sorts of wires and she was being monitored heavily. This machine was even more ear piercing that the last. The next morning it came off at 9a.m. and we waited around for results. At 5pm. we got the results. Kara stopped breathing 12 times in 12 hours. I freaked...and I mean FREAKED out. I looked at Tim who looked at the doctor and said "I want to go to go to Syracuse...I quickly agreed and Dr. Victoria left the room to see what he could do. The doctor in Syracuse who read the pneumogram said she may have a mild case of Sleep Apnea but her heart rate wasn't dropping enough for it to be considered that. I told the doctors that I didn't care, I wanted her in Syracuse where I knew that she would be taken better care of. They tried there hardest to arrange it, but they were full. Dr. Victoria allowed me, I think for my sanity, to spend one more night in the hospital so Kara would be monitored. After a lot of convincing and an appt in Syracuse on Tuesday, I finally told them that I think I was ready to go home. I really wasn't and I honestly was freaking out, but they sent us home with a monitor so we could pretty much do the same thing they were doing at the hospital at home. We came home Thursday night around 6p.m. and I immediately packed for my parents and we came up here yesterday.
Tim had to fix his truck and he also had to work 12 hours today. I didn't want to be alone, so we came up here and are spending the weekend. Kara has only had a few gagging episodes here but nothing significant. I still get really nervous, but I'm getting better, I just have to nudge her if she stops breathing and she will start again. So we go Tuesday to Syracuse to figure out what is going on and to consult with a Pediatric Sleep Apnea specialist at St. Joe's. We don't know if we are spending the night to do the test that day or if this is a consultation. Next week is full of so many appointments and it seems like my time off from work with this little girl is winding down. I get so emotional when I think about it but I know that I need to cherish the time with her. She will be 2 weeks on Monday and she looks so much different now than she did 2 weeks ago. Time is flying and I really don't want it to.

Thanks to everyone for the prayers and the continued support...


Tim, Gabe, Kara and Family